


What He Missed

by BuzzCat



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 16:54:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20696876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuzzCat/pseuds/BuzzCat
Summary: Ford missed a lot of things while he was away. Stan hands him a stack of obituaries and Ford is forced to reconcile with not what he missed, but who.





	What He Missed

Ford wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. It was done. The portal was disassembled. The victory felt hollow though. Bill had still gotten what he wanted: a Rift existed. Ford’s eyes shot to the snowglobe-esque object on his worktable. He’d have to be careful with it. If it broke—

Ford heard the elevator whoosh open and he looked up. Perhaps it was one of the children. Stanley stepped around the corner and Ford grimaced, looking back at the pile of scrap he’d cleared. Of course, just when he had the Rift contained, Stanley would enter the room. _After all, it’s not like he has a history of breaking important things,_ Ford groused to himself.

“Can I help you with something?” Ford asked, standing over the pile of scrap. Stan came around the plexiglass screen and Ford saw he had a small stack of papers in hand. Stan stopped when he saw the lack of portal. He opened his mouth, then shut it again. He moved to the workbench and Ford took the smallest step forward. It was silly; it was unlikely that Stanley’s first instinct would be to destroy a seemingly innocuous snow globe. But still…

Stanley tensed before putting the paperwork on the table with almost mocking care. “You missed some stuff. Thought you’d like to know.”

Ford walked over to the paperwork. The top sheet turned his blood to ice. He looked up to Stanley’s retreating back. He could dimly make out some kind of tattoo on his shoulder.

“W—” his throat was dry. Ford swallowed and tried again. “What is this?”

Stan paused. “Thought you could read.” He paused a beat, “Let me know if…if you have questions.” Stan trudged to the elevator, leaving Ford alone with the deceptively simple stack of papers.

Ford looked down at it. It was a small stack, maybe ten pieces of paper all together. But it made him want to run very far away. With shaking hands, he picked up the first piece of paper.

It was Ma’s obituary. All there, in black and white. Cassandra Pines had died in a freak air conditioner accident in 2007. Survived by her son, Stanford Pines. Preceded in death by her husband, Filibrick Pines and her sons, Stanley Pines and Sherman Pines.

Ford replaced the paper on the stack and held it gingerly in his hands, afraid of what else it may contain. He couldn’t read this. Not down here, in a dark basement already so full of horrific memories. He took the elevator up, staying still as the doors slid open to listen for other inhabitants moving around. He breathed a sigh of relief as he shut the door; Stan was busy giving tours and the kids were out exploring with their friends. He didn’t know what he would have done if someone saw him. Ford slinked into his bedroom and closed the door before collapsing into the couch.

Ford set the small stack of papers beside him, again picking up the obituary for Cassandra Pines. In the light from the window, he could more easily see the paper. There was a picture there. A picture of Ma, old like he had never seen her. Her hair had gone snow white and her skin wrinkled. But she was smiling, happy in a way he didn’t remember seeing her before. He wondered if that was what changed after Filibrick died.

Ford stared at the picture for a long while before setting it aside. There was more to the obituary, more to read on the life he’d missed. But now Ford knew what it was Stan had handed him: a stack of obituaries. Ford needed to know, almost as badly as he never wanted to find out.

As he went through the stack, Ford felt the warmth leech from his body, leaving him cold and tired. The next obituary was Pa. Then Shermie. Various other relatives Ford barely remembered. Reverse chronological order. But it was all of them. Ford’s whole family was dead. Except for Stan.

Tears gathered in his eyes and Ford resolutely ignored them. He stood, leaving the obituaries in a haphazard pile on the couch, and crossed to his bookshelf to pull out a four-inch tome on light cones. He set the book on his desk and lifted the cover, revealing the hollowed-out center filled with envelopes.

Ford picked up the first. The envelope had his name written on it, his mother’s handwriting spiky in her signature way. He pulled the letter out and sat down, reading it to himself.

_Stanford—_

_Oh my baby boy, you’re off to college! I always knew you could do it. I’m so proud of you. You’re going to change the world, Stanford. I’ve seen it coming and I know you will. Now, call me on the business line after you get settled in. I want to know what Backupsmore is like!_

_Love,_

_Ma_

She’d sent him dozens of letters while he was at school. Most of them weren’t very long, just notes to call her more often or to come home for one holiday or another. Ford had always thrown them out, but Fiddleford had always put them back on his desk with the logic of “you can’t throw those out, they’re from family”. Ford had ended up saving them all, more against his will than anything.

Ford gently folded up the letter and returned it to its envelope. He stood up, put the book back on the shelf, and carefully shuffled the obituaries into a pile. Then, put his head in his hands and wept.

Ford must have fallen asleep half slumped forward because when he woke up everything was sore. The sun had set, but night hadn’t fully crept in when he looked out the window. The kids were already in bed. Ford walked to the door, opening it. Sure enough, he could hear an infomercial playing from the living room and nothing else.

He gathered the papers—Stan’s papers—to his chest and walked downstairs.

Stan sat in his lounger, an television on but a million miles away. Ford put the papers on the kitchen table, clearing his throat. Stan looked over at him.

Stan said nothing.

Ford said nothing.

Ford didn’t even know if there was anything to say. All of their family was dead. Parents, brother, everyone. It was just them.

“Did you go to the funerals?”

“Some.” Stan said. He turned back to the television. Ford crossed through the room to sit beside him on the dinosaur skull, electing to watch the informercial as well. Death was something best discussed while making no eye contact whatsoever.

“Which ones?”

“Ma’s. Shermie’s. Shermie’s wife’s.”

“Not Pa’s.” Ford didn’t say it like a question. Stan swallowed, then replied anyway,

“Not Pa’s.”

Ford nodded. “Your own?”

At that, Stan’s mouth quirked into a fraction of a smile, Ford could see it from the corner of his eye. “Everyone wants to go to their own funeral, Ford. Of course I went. Pa…ah, Pa didn’t.”

Ford thought he might have been surprised about that, on a different day. Instead, he simply nodded.

The commercial continued hawking Owl Trowels.

Ford’s mind floated back to something Stan had said, on his first night back in this dimension. _You stay away from those kids because as far as I’m concerned, they’re the only family I got left. _And Stan was right. Dipper and Mabel and the kids’ parents were the only family left.

Suddenly, for possibly the first time in forty years, Ford felt very alone in the world. He was sitting beside his twin brother, from whom he had spent twice as much time apart than together. Upstairs were the only two other people who knew he was even alive (Ford wasn’t sure whether or not the gopher man counted). In this dimension, there were three people who knew he was alive. Three members of his family. And after the summer, he was unlikely to see any of them again. Mabel and Dipper would go home, and Stan would give Ford his life back and disappear into the dusk. Leaving Ford alone in a house with his equipment and his science and without another person for miles.

The prospect didn’t entice nearly as much as it had three days ago.

In some distant part of his mind, Ford had always known that people in his dimension would die while he was away. In the scarce moments he thought of home, it occurred to him that as he aged, so did his family. He’d known his mother would grow old and die. His father, too. Shermie had been more surprising; Ford had always imagined that Shermie would outlive Stan and himself both through sheer common sense (or simply a penchant for the mundane, as opposed to Ford). But Shermie was gone. And his parents were gone.

Ford’s mind circled back to that thought. He was an orphan. A sixty-something (time got funny in the multiverse) year-old orphan, so hardly surprising, but still. His parents and brother were dead, all of them at least five years gone. Somewhere in New Jersey, his mother and father were laying in the ground. And somewhere in California, his big brother was buried beside a wife that Ford had never met.

He couldn’t make it make sense. None of it made sense. When family died, there was mourning. There was community. There were relatives he barely knew, cheese sandwiches everyone pretended to want to eat, aunts who tried very nicely to set him up with a friend’s daughter. It wasn’t three obituaries and a mourner’s pamphlet. That’s not how death works.

The Owl Trowel announcer faded out and Stan turned the television off. In the empty television screen, Ford was confronted with his own reflection. He still looked like his father. But old, older than Filibrick had ever lived to be. Ford was older than his Pa had ever been, and something in that seemed to shift the world on its axis.

Ford looked down at his hands, tangled together like he always did when he was distracted. “Stanley?”

He heard more than saw Stan turn to face him.

“Thank you…” For what? For telling him his family was dead? For not making Stanford realize it on his own? For saving him from the hell of calling a number long out of service? “Thank you for sharing these with me.”

Ford thought he saw Stan stiffen out of the corner of his eye, but then the anger blew out of him like the wind in a sail and by the time Ford looked at him properly, Stan just looked tired.

“You’re welcome.” Stan stood up and went upstairs, joints cracking each step of the way.

Ford knew there were other words to say, something profound to be said in a family where there were only two people left. But he didn’t have those words tonight. He doubted he’d even know what words those were supposed to be.

Instead, he went to his room. Ford laid down on his couch, pulled the blankets up to his chin, and stared at the ceiling until the sun rose.


End file.
